Togo Welcome

Flags Promenade, Lomé, Togo.

As a journalist traveling the world, you learn to tell a lot from the welcome you receive. Are people open, approachable, and eager to talk? Or are they suspicious, afraid, and liable to give you as little as possible? From the moment you go through immigration at the airport, you start to get a feel for how difficult or not your job is going to be in getting people to share their stories, introduce you to their friends, and point you toward the unreported places and people.

Togo is a country that opens its arms to visitors and provides the warmest possible welcome. As soon as you arrive, you become part of the family. I flew in on Christmas Eve, and was immediately welcomed into the home of my friend Tessia’s uncle, a former ambassador. I entered to find a party already in full swing. For the duration of my stay, I was treated like a long-lost friend. As the head of the family said to me: “a foreigner always has a place in our house.”

Wherever you look in Togo, a warm welcome is usually being extended. A friend told me how she moved into a new apartment to find the landlord had already covered the bills up until the end of the month, to help her with moving costs. This is not rare. People make it their responsibility to be a good and welcoming host to all comers. The same ethos is baked into its immigration system, and it has been ranked fifth out of all African countries for visa openness, where people can travel without papers or by securing one on arrival. It ranks highly on the Gallup list of the countries that are most accepting of immigrants.

The Togolese culture of welcome also extends into the practice of ancestor worship, recognizing and calling upon the spirits believed to be inherent in all things: animals, plants, and every part of the landscape around us. The priest Godfried Agbezudor introduced me to the idea that there should be no boundaries to our consciousness, that we must welcome in every spirit that surrounds us. The ceremonies that seek to achieve this with drums, music, and the invocation of spirits that go on deep into the night, were like nothing else I had ever seen or been a part of.

Among the smallest of West Africa’s countries, Togo has nevertheless been a strategically important route for trade throughout its history. It was contested territory among colonial powers, passing from Portugal to Germany, the U.K., and finally France before achieving independence in 1960. Togo’s history at the center of the colonial slave trade is reflected in the widespread prevalence of Brazilian names, among families descended from Afro-Brazilian slaves who returned to West Africa in large numbers during the nineteenth century. Today, it remains an important trading hub for the West African economy, and the diverse heritage of its people is clear to see.

There is so much to be gained, both personally and professionally, by being welcoming to new people and ideas, rather than defaulting to the standard instinct to avoid the unknown and the untested. Unless we welcome in the new, we get stuck in a rut, stay in the past, and lose the ability to learn and develop. That stands for people, businesses, and communities as a whole. An unwelcoming institution is one that is closed off to the benefits of change. By contrast, a warm welcome opens the door to boundless opportunity.